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A dear friend of the family and I had a summer goal of finding the alleged grave of Jesse James in the Granbury Cemetery. We had tried last summer, but had no luck in the approaching dark. This time we set out in early evening and found Jessie’s grave, as well as Granbury’s grave and the burial site of an amputated arm.

Granbury (sometimes seen as Granberry) is the namesake of the town. As far as I can tell he never lived in Granbury, but his body was exhumed (for the second time) and buried here. There is also a gravesite for his wife, Fannie Granbury, though she isn’t buried there. She died at the young age of 25 and is in an unmarked grave in Alabama which is where she died of natural causes.

The buried arm is that of W. H. Holland who lost his arm in a childhood accident on November 16, 1895. The rest of Mr. Holland died sometime later and is buried elsewhere in the cemetery. The photo that shows that is of three above ground tombs. The arm is in the middle and there are infants to either side.

History tells us that the outlaw Jesse James was killed by a member of his gang in 1882 for the reward money. However, relatives of James say that his death was faked and it is really somebody else buried in Missouri in a grave labeled Jessie James. The story goes that James was even a pallbearer at his own funeral! James took the alias of J. Frank Dalton and settled in Granbury eventually passing away in 1951 at the age of 103. Apparently toward the end of his life he even confessed. At the bottom of his headstone (look hard!) it says “supposedly killed in 1882”.

Haunted Granbury by Brandy Herr is full of interesting stories and well worth reading.